Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star

Shirley Temple might have gone on to become a diplomat, and Ron Howard graduated from playing Opie in The Andy Griffith Show to winning an Oscar for directing A Beautiful Mind.

But by and large, being young and famous on screen is more likely to be a curse than a blessing, especially when it comes to career longevity.

At least that's the experience of Dickie Roberts (David Spade), a 35-year-old wash-up from the (fictitious) '70s hit series The Glimmer Gang who now makes his living parking cars.

Desperate to return to the spotlight, he pins all his hopes on scoring an audition for the lead role in a new Rob Reiner movie - a curious strategy, given Reiner's recent track record as a director (clearly he hadn't seen Alex and Emma).

But Reiner (playing himself) says he can't consider Dickie for the part as he's not normal enough thanks to his showbiz childhood. Determined to make Reiner think again, Dickie pays a seemingly regular family to have him board in their suburban abode for a month so that he can experience a "real" childhood, complete with a fake Christmas get together.

In a thinly veiled reference to Michael Jackson, Dickie also moves into the same room as the two kids, and becomes distressed when asked to take off his gloves.

After this promising, if possibly tasteless, set up, the film soon becomes mired in the most predictable of sentiments, while Spade, never one for comic subtlety, completely fails to make the most of some of the more potentially amusing sequences.

Indeed, the only genuinely inventive moments in the whole movie occur when a bevy of real life former child stars (including Leif Garrett) are hauled in for cameo appearances, and together they provide us with a closing credit sequence that's far funnier than anything in the movie itself.